JavaScript: Calculate the Hamming distance between two values

JavaScript fundamental (ES6 Syntax): Exercise-219 with Solution

Hamming Distance

Write a JavaScript program to calculate the Hamming distance between two values.

• Use the XOR operator (^) to find the bit difference between the two numbers.
• Convert to a binary string using Number.prototype.toString(2).
• Count and return the number of 1s in the string, using String.prototype.match(/1/g).

Sample Solution:

JavaScript Code:

// Define a function 'hammingDistance' to calculate the Hamming distance between two numbers
const hammingDistance = (num1, num2) => (
  // XOR the two numbers and convert the result to a binary string
  (num1 ^ num2)
    .toString(2)
    // Match all occurrences of '1' in the binary string and return their count, which represents the Hamming distance
    .match(/1/g) || ''
).length;

// Test the 'hammingDistance' function with different pairs of numbers
console.log(hammingDistance(2, 3)); // Output: 1
console.log(hammingDistance(5, 3)); // Output: 2
// Define a function 'hammingDistance' to calculate the Hamming distance between two numbers
const hammingDistance = (num1, num2) => (
  // XOR the two numbers and convert the result to a binary string
  (num1 ^ num2)
    .toString(2)
    // Match all occurrences of '1' in the binary string and return their count, which represents the Hamming distance
    .match(/1/g) || ''
).length;

// Test the 'hammingDistance' function with different pairs of numbers
console.log(hammingDistance(2, 3)); // Output: 1
console.log(hammingDistance(5, 3)); // Output: 2

Output:

1
2

Flowchart:

Live Demo:

See the Pen javascript-basic-exercise-219-1 by w3resource (@w3resource) on CodePen.

For more Practice: Solve these Related Problems:

• Write a JavaScript program that calculates the Hamming distance between two strings of equal length by comparing corresponding characters.
• Write a JavaScript function that computes the Hamming distance between two numbers by converting them to binary and counting differing bits.
• Write a JavaScript program that verifies the input lengths before computing the Hamming distance between two sequences.
• Write a JavaScript function that returns the Hamming distance and handles error cases when strings differ in length.

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